Four Years in the Institute's Gates
by 90TheGeneral09
Summary: Based off Season 6: Episode 22 "The Long Blue Line" and Episode 23 "Into the Blue". Cadet Lawrence Gardner was murdered in 2009 by Major Moe Kitchener. After Kitchener's actions became known and the Major was arrested and dismissed from his post as a staff member of PMI, other members of the Pennsylvania Military Institute Class of 2009 found and published this poem.
1. Chapter 1- The Poem

**Based off TV show "Cold Case" Season 6: Episode 22 "The Long Blue Line" and Season 6: Episode 23 "Into the Blue". During his knob year at the Pennsylvania Military Institute, Cadet Lawrence Gardner wrote a poem after a particularly harsh "sweat party", a private reminder of how badly he had wanted to come to PMI and why he was going to remain now that he was there. He kept it with him but never read it to anyone for the next three years. After his murder at the hands of Major Moe Kitchener, the PMI Class of 2009 published the poem as a last-minute addition to their year's issue of **_**Sword Drill**_**, the PMI cadet yearbook. The inscription beneath it on that solitary page in the yearbook reads as it will below; the Latin phrase featured is the Gardner family motto.**

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**Four Years in the Institute's Gates**

XX

Oh, St. Augustine's quite a wonderful place, and I've heard so's Beverly too

But you'll find if you ask a quite different task amongst any junior kid new

It's not to spend college at Harvard, eating breakfast on silver-lined plates

Take your four-poster bed, just give me instead four years in the Institute's gates

XX

In good times of days past, our teen minds were fast filled with thoughts of champagne

Of money and girls, of Barracudas and swirls, in our heads of all we could gain

'Twas too good to last, those parties now past, and now in college applications of late

When they ask aspiration, I have no hesitation: four years in the Institute's gates

XX

Knobs are dumber than hell, our IQ's just swell, they go down a bit every day

From our dazed face expressions, they know our profession, those free men who pass by our way

We're ungodly slobs, God-cursed knobs, and until our cadre's screaming abates

Give us the courage to make it, show we can take it: four years in the Institute's gates

XX

So once it's all done and said, and my life's story is read, the line now drawn in the sand

I'll face Him with pride, bristleback by my side, a certain gold ring on my hand

Smoking that cigar they say He so hates

And say: Send me to Heaven or Hell, I know them both well

After four years in the Institute's gates

XX

_In Memory of Cadet Katherine Butler & Cadet Lawrence Gardner_

_Honor Super Omnia = Honor Above All Things_


	2. Chapter 2- The Notes

**Chapter II- The Notes**

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**Notes:**

**The motto "Honor Super Omnia" is pretty self-explanatory. I chose it because as flawed as some of his views are, Lawrence Gardner clearly comes from a family that has a motto they take seriously. It seems to fit Gardner and Butler personally, and the Pennsylvania Military Institute as a whole. This motto for the Gardner family is my creation, however; beyond stating on a record from 2005 that Lawrence Gardner is from Philadelphia, PA, the show gives no details on Lawrence Gardner or his family.**

**The mention of a "bristleback" in the poem is a reference to PMI's sports mascot, the tusked bristleback. The animal is a type of ferocious, highly resilient hog living on the northern, wintry island of Solstheim in the Bloodmoon expansion of the video game "Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind". No sports mascot is specified for PMI, and I wanted the school to have something similar to The Citadel's bulldog for a mascot. The tusked bristleback does not exist in our world, but I altered things a little bit so that it does in this fictional one. After all, there is no Pennsylvania Military Institute in our world either.**

**Also, those who have watched Episode 22 and 23 of Season 6 will remember that Cadet Major Lawrence Gardner was an extremely religious young man. When speaking to Detectives Lilly Rush and Scotty Valens, Gardner speaks matter-of-factly of his intense love for and loyalty to the Pennsylvania Military Institute of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He states "That's why on the Eighth Day, God created PMI" in response to Det. Valens remarking that he finds the PMI honour code- "A cadet shall not lie, cheat or steal, nor shall he tolerate those who do"- to be "a pretty strict code for most mortals".**

**It is strongly implied that the cadet who attacks Kate Butler in the showers, slicing her hand with his sword while his face remains hidden in the shadows, is Lawrence Gardner. The Cadet Sergeant- Gardner would likely have been a sophomore at the time so that sort of fits, though most 4-year military college sophomores rank as corporals- shouts at her, "Answer me, knob! You hiding from the sight of God?" This poem and "The Halls of PMI" are meant to suggest that Lawrence Gardner, while a well-meaning and generally honest young man, was like many ring-wearing men at and from PMI a little too loyal to the school and its own way of doing things. This loyalty resulted in Lawrence placing his trust in the hands of Major Moe Kitchener, who killed Lawrence the minute he realised Lawrence knew too much about Kate Butler's death- which was in fact a murder. Only Detective Lilly Rush's relentless search for the truth made it possible for the truth of Lawrence and Kate's deaths to be told.**


End file.
